Light

Work Title: Light
Medium: Novel
Episode Title:
Year: 2002
Writer(s): John M. Harrison
"Original" Writer: Yes Own work?: No
Summary:

From Publishers Weekly Harrison's talent for brilliant, reality-bending SF is on display yet again with this three-tiered tale, published (and highly praised) in the U.K. in 2002. It's 1999, and British scientist Michael Kearney and his American partner, Brian Tate, are studying laboratory quantum physics; unbeknownst to them, they'll become the fathers of interplanetary travel. Kearney nervously holds a pair of predictive dice he's stolen from a frightening specter called the Shrander, whom he keeps at bay by committing random murders. Four hundred years in the future, K-ship captain Seria Mau Genlicher has gravely erred in splicing herself with a hijacked spacecraft called the White Cat—and now she wants out. There's also Ed Chianese, a burned-out interstellar surfer now spending his life within a reality simulation machine. His problem? Monetary debt to the nasty Cray sisters. As Kearney continues to narrowly evade the Shrander, he discovers that company CEO Gordon Meadows has sold the lab to Sony. All three story lines converge and find heavenly closure at the cosmological wonder known as the Kefahuchi Tract, a wormhole with alien origins bordered by a vast, astral "beach" where time and space are braided and interchangeable. This is space opera for the intelligentsia, as Harrison (Things That Never Happen) tweaks aspects of astrophysics, fantasy and humanism to hum right along with the blinking holograms in a welcome and long overdue return.

  • Self-Written?:
  • Source Name: Publisher's Weekly
  • Source URL:
Era/Year of Portrayal: distant_future
Distinctive characteristics of the world in portrayal:

Around the year 2400. people live on many planets, space travel is common, clones are common

Technology

  • Name of portrayed presence-evoking technology: K ship
  • Description of the technology: A 'K Ship' is a space ship that is seemingly run by a human pilot, but she has merged herself with the ship. They are essentially one, although she has less control over the ship (and herself) than the 'shadows' do. There are shadows who run the ship and offer advice to Seria (the pilot). When Seria was 12 years old, she opted to become a ship's pilot, and submit herself to surgery and a lifetime of service. She is part of the ship, unable to leave the ship.
  • Nature of task or activity: She is constantly interacting with the shadows and the ship, beaming an image of herself onto planets to talk to people.
  • Performance of the Technology: It functions well - she just has changed her mind and wants to separate from the ship.
  • Description of creator(s): nameless, faceless scientists.
  • Major goal(s) of creator(s): to create a bettter army.
  • Description of users of technology: Her image is forever 12 years old, the age she joined the ship. In reality, she is located inside a coffin like enclosure, filled with liquid, surgically wired into the ships systems, kept alive by machines
  • Type(s) of presence experience in the portrayal: social_presence
  • Description of presence experience: It is physically and mentally unpleasant, yet gratifiying to command the ship. She wanted to leave, yet could not.
  • User awareness of technology during experience: Yes
  • Valence of experience: unpleasant now, but pleasant at first to leave home and command a ship.
  • Specific responses: She could sucessfullly command a ship and kill or let leave anyone on it. Howewever, being part of the ship altered her memories of her life before being the ship, as well as destroyed her body.
Long-term consequences:

The ending is a little confusing, although I think that her internal battle with the ship caused her to die.

Other:

I found this novel very confusing and may have misinterpreted some details. There were several overlaping storylines and much futuristic vocabulary that went unexplained.

Coder name: Amanda Scheiner
Coder email: amandags@temple.edu
Coder affiliation: Temple University